Fight or flight?

[Shaolinfist]

Dear forum, I was wondering if anyone would share with me their thoughts on what situations it is a good idea to avoid confrontation, and when it is necessary in order to uphold rightiousness. I am asking this because me and my fiancée were at the park with her 4 year old son, and there were 2 guys sat on the grass a little way away shouting rude and sexual comments at her. After 5-10 minutes we realised they weren't going to stop so we got up and left. I remember Sifu saying to us in class one day that the best thing to do in a fight is to run away, but where do we draw the line with upholding rightiousness? Part of me feels glad that we walked away without any trouble, but another part of me wishes I had gone over to them and confronted them.
Thanks in advance for your input.

Philip

[Damian Kissey]

Your action is right , correct spacing .

You also can quietly call the patrol police by cellphone to inform about harrasment .....the cops might drive by making a presence and teaching some people that there is such thing as worldy laws.

Also sharpen your kungfu skills to fascilitate escape , in case they suddenly attack .

If you are ready , you can approach them and turn them into friends with words and action .

[Daniel]

Dear Phillip,

What you did what´s right.
Make sure you and your loved ones are safe first. This may involve as Damian said, being aware of the escape route.
Also, it would be a good idea, once you are away from them to call the police, else those guys will develop a sense of impunity that´s not good for noone.

I don´t recommend fighting them unless you are quite sure of beating them (but I must admit that when I go angry I´ll do unexpected things anyway)

Best wishes,

[Hussain]

Dear Phillip,

the best way to do in a fight is not to fight even if you are sure of beating them.

And what you did was the wise decision.


Regards,

Hussain

[Hendrik]

Hi Philip,
your question is a good but difficult one to answer and it is hard to know where to draw the line. I can understand why you feel a bit frustrated about the fact that you didn't confront those thugs. I think anyone will understand this because everyone has moments in their life when they wished they would have stood up for themselves or the people they care about. But rest assured, I think everyone will agree that the decision you made was the right one.

The other instructors are right about the fact that you have to think about your security and of those around you first. Keeping it real and confronting thugs for their idiot behaviour is not worth the possibility of being harmed. I know we learn Kung Fu or Taijiquan for sparring and defending ourselves in combat but you can never know what could happen in a situation such as yours.
Calling the police is also a good idea because even if you can't teach someone a lesson the police might be able to.

However, I do believe that in life it is important to stand up for yourself and for those around you becuase otherwise you will probably become unhappy and lose confidence in yourself. The only problem is, when do you stand up for yourself? As in sparring there is a right time to attack, to defend and to retreat from a fight. Unfortunately, as with most things in life there is no magical formula that will solve every confrontation if verbal or physical.

So I think nobody can give you a real answer to "where to draw the line?". That is a decision that you have to make for yourself. But you can remind yourself not lo look for danger if you can avoid it and to think of your well-being and of those around you before you make your decision. I guess as with everything in life you will have to try to find the middle path, which is always the hardest one to find

All the best
Hendrik

[Martin Do]

Blessings to all

Dear Phillip,

I am sorry to hear of the incident you and your girlfriend had. However, there are positiveness that has come out of this because it has given you a chance to think about the situation, formulate and consolidate your own views and choice on what you would do in a similar situation in future. Furthermore, it also give other readers the opportunity to do the same if they have not already done so.

I have enjoyed reading the generous and very good advice above very much and would like to offer my own views on this too.

For myself, I would say:

1) Aspire to live by the spirit of the schools Ten Shaolin Laws.
2) Use your logic.
3) Listen to your chi (or go with your instinct or gut feeling).

I personally feel that when you aspire to live by the spirit of the Ten Shaolion Laws of our school, somehow these situations present itself much less frequently. This certainly has been the case for me personally.

In such scenario, it is also important to use your logic. Are you combat efficient. How many of them are there. Are there possible forms of weapons near them, if yes can you handle that. Therefore if you are not combat efficient, it is better to walk away. If you hate walking away, then practice diligently to become combat efficient .

You may find that once you have become very combat efficient, you would choose to walk away anyway. The important difference however, would be that you have not lost confidence and that you freely and happy chose to walk away, not doing so with frustration and reluctance.

Thirdly, listen to your chi or gut instinct. Even if you are reasonably combat efficient, if you feel hesitant in confronting them then it is likely that your words, actions and skills will be hesitant which could put you and your love one in danger. Furthermore, if you sincerely aspire to live by the Ten Shaolin Laws of our school, then whatever your gut instinct may be, I feel it is unlikely to be be one with bad intent, irrespective of what you may do or what may happen.

I hope this may be of use.

Many blessings to all the bad boys out there, hoping they will find a path to a more peaceful heart and righteous intentions .

Best wishes

Martin

[Shaolinfist]

Thank you all very much for your replies. After reading what you said and reflecting, I think I did the right thing for me and my family, especially as I am in Canada as a tourist at the moment and wouldn't want to jeopardize my status here over a couple of idiots. In a way I suppose something good came out of it, as it reminded me of the importance of being in shape and combat efficient, and I was lucky enough not to have to learn that the hard way. So I will be training more diligently from now on so that I can protect me and my family from harm and make the right decisions in difficult situations.

Thanks again

Philip

[Casper]

Dear Philip,

Thank you for sharing your experience and for raising this interesting topic!

I have also found myself in situations where I'd also wish I had done something instead of just walking away, or if I should have defended my pride and honour but some times walking away might be the best situation, but as my seniors have pointed out this can be hard to judge at times.

If I may I'd like to give an example from Sun Zi's Art of War that I recently stumbled upon that I feel is relevant to the topic at hand:

"In War, you must win; in attacking, you must take the initiative. If its not beneficial to the country, do not take action.

If you cannot win, do not go to war. If you are not in danger, do not fight.

The king must not initiate war due to a momentary anger. Likewise, the general must no attack the enemy with indignation as his basis.

You must act according to what benefits the country. If it’s not beneficial to the country, halt activity.

For anger can become happiness, and indignation can become joy. But once the country is lost, there is no way to bring it back; and once a life is lots, there is no way to revive it.

Therefore, an intelligent sovereign will weigh heavily his choice of engaging in war his choice of engaging in war, and an outstanding general will use his forces with caution.

This is the foundation for maintaining a peaceful country and guaranteeing the integrity of the military."

In your case thankfully you and your love ones were not in danger, but were though being harassed by a couple of immature people out to ruin your day, so was there really a need to engage in confrontation with them?
Though I can fully understand how it feels to be in such situation having been in some myself, in this situation I would agree with my seniors that you did the right thing by just walking away and calling the police might have taught the people a lesson. This way you and your loved ones (and even the offenders) remained unharmed and can still enjoy the nice day in another place (maybe at another park?) and can laugh or take pity to those two fools who gets enjoyment of trying to ruin other peoples day and mood.

Thus anger can truly become happiness. Maybe those two people were just looking to start a fight, maybe they had a knife? It’s hard to predict what the outcome of a confrontation might be. Therefore I myself have grown to the point where I don't feel the need to spend my time or energy on fools like that unless I have no option of avoiding it. It takes a lot for me to get angry and I usually just laugh at people who feel the need to insult me for one reason or another and I pity them.

I would also like to note that I have only very recently begun reading the Art of War, mainly through inspiration from my Sifu (Adam Kryder), and thus my interpretation of the said piece might be wrong. Thus I welcome my seniors to correct me

With respect,

Casper

[Anton S.]

All given advices are good

Safety first: you never know if these guys are armed or not. If there is no necessity to fight, avoid it.
Why provoke danger for yourself and your family?

But going away it feels like a failure.
This was not a failure at all, but indeed a very smart decision.

I am happy to hear that you didn´t mess with these guys for no reason,
and i think you can be proud of such a smart and safe deed.

Have some compassion and forget them

[rachelgreen]

no damage happened that would be the smartest way!

[AlexBaranosky]

I would say let them heckle.

If it was me, I would laugh on the inside knowing how blessed I am. I might feel a twinge of sadness that some people live their lives in a self-created hell, that thugs like them will never have the kind of happiness I have.

They heckle you because they are jealous of what you have, because they don't feel good enough to have it they attempt to harm your pride and pull you into their anger-filled world.

I see zero reason to fight anyone. The thugs have enough problems just being themselves. I'm much more content to find another park. Heck, I don't even need a park, I've got inner peace, everywhere is park to me

[Jimbeaux]

Nice words Alex.

Does anyone see any sense in the way I see it?:

There are different ways people can lift themselves up/make themselves feel good/or give themselves energy.

Two very common ways of doing this are (1) Doing something good for another person, or (2) Doing something bad to another person.

The later is obviously destructive, you are robbing someone of their energy to give yourself a very short-lived high (i.e., laughing at someone you've put down). In the long run, you are only collecting very bad karma.

The former is obviously constructive, you're giving of yourself to another person. You give the other person energy and make yourself feel great and build up good karma.

Of course, we have plenty of energy from our practice too.

[AlexBaranosky]

The method of feeling good that involves hurting others is a downward spiral. It is only an illusion. Like you said, it feels good (to some) for a short time, but it is insidious, and eventually takes you down with it. This is because you become trapped inside your own mind, and the judgments you are expressing towards them you eventually will see within yourself, and seeing them inside yourself you will judge yourself.

Basically the habit of hurting others will eventually become the habit of hurting yourself.

[Eric5]

Hi Philip,

I think you did exactly the right thing to walk away as one of the fundamentals of our training is safety first. In this case you put the safety of your family first which is never a bad thing.

I know it is hard as you possibly felt you should have confronted these two but if you had confronted them, and beaten them badly, there is no guarantee that you would feel better? Also in a court of law as a martial arts practioner if you strike first then your hands are classed as lethal weapons and therefore you could end up in trouble with the law.

I have an experience myself where by a drunk man came upto me and a female fried sometime ago when we were on our lunch at work. I was just waiting to cross the road with her when he came up put his hand on my shoulder and said "were you staring at me?". Part of me wanted to hit him so hard i wanted to knock him out but i just took a step back out of his reach and said nothing and looked at him straight in the eyes. He then ran off. I like, you thought about it for a while should i have acted? I then thought about if i had struck him what was to prevent him waiting for me the next day with a weapon to retaliate.

I think unless you have absolutely no choice then defend yourself but it takes the bigger man to walk away.

Kind Regards

Eric.................

[parrapiti]

We don´t have to see the possibilities of choice in the extremes of a continuum. The two opposite ends of a long line of options are to fight or to flight, but in between there are infinite possible combinations.

We can ask ourselves when to fight and when to flight and we will remain in the extremes. We can also ask ourselves what other possibilities are there in that continuum of choice and act with freedom.

Piti